


The Difference Between Flying and Standing on the Ground

by notquitesoancient



Category: Leviathan - Scott Westerfeld
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, Gen, M/M, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-18
Updated: 2015-05-18
Packaged: 2018-03-31 05:07:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3965515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notquitesoancient/pseuds/notquitesoancient
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short drabble/character study about trans man Dylan Sharp</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Difference Between Flying and Standing on the Ground

**Author's Note:**

> The voice may be a bit off as I haven't read the books in a few years, but this character was pretty important to my own identity as a trans boy and I wanted to write a little something.

Deryn stared at herself in the mirror, trying to find in her features that girl who she had seen all that time ago before she had entered the service. The more she played at being Dylan the more it felt right. She could still see the features that made her look like a girl, the ones that caused her pause before reporting in the morning, made her nearly shit her pants wondering if today was the day they would catch her in her lie. Was it even a lie though? She wasn't sure who she was trying to fool anymore; the service into thinking she was a boy, or herself into thinking she was really a girl under her slops? Because now when she looked in the mirror she couldn't help but see a man. One who looked like a sixteen-year old girl maybe, but a man none the less.

She- no. He? He looked at himself some more trying to turn the idea around in his head. It had been nice, this time on the leviathan. The lady boffin’s sharp ‘keep up young man’ when Dylan had asked some stupid-arse question about whatever boffin bull Barlow had been explaining to him. Newkirk's sloppy, 'Oi! Dylan! Stop hogging all the mash!' at dinner. It all felt so much more comfortable than all that shite back home with mum and the aunties. Like the difference between slops and petticoats, between flying and standing on the ground.

It didn’t make sense but the more he thought about it the less it seemed there could be any other way. Not that the service cared. If they got a look at his tits he’d be down and out, not matter whether there was a boy in his brain or not. So he put it out of his head. Let himself think that he was Dylan Sharp just like everyone else did and that was that.

Until Alek found out of course. Because how the fuck was he supposed to explain all that to him? The boy who he’d been mooning over for barking months now, his best mate. All of it completely bollocksed up by a damn newspaper article. Not that he could explain it if the royal bumrag never spoke to him again. Well and truly fucked, he was.


End file.
